Masters of the Guild eBook

Oh, the unworn joy of living
Is not far to find,—­
Leave the bell and book and candle
Of the world behind,
In your coracle slow drifting,
Without haste or plan,
You shall catch the wordless music
Of the great god Pan.

You shall wear the cap of rushes,
And shall hear that day
All the wild duck and the heron
And the curlew say.
You shall taste the wild bees’ honey
That since life began
They have hidden for their master—­
For the great god Pan.

You who follow in the pathway
Of the waters fleet,
You shall tread the gold of springtime
’Neath your careless feet,
Gold the hasting rivers gathered
Without thought of man,—­
Flung aside as hushed they listened
To the pipes of Pan!

V

THE TAPESTRY CHAMBER

Lady Philippa sat with her little daughter Eleanor
in the tapestry chamber. This was the only corner
of the gray old Norman castle which seemed really
their own. All the rest of it was under the rule
of Sir Stephen Giffard, the eldest son of the house,
and still more under the rule of his mother, Lady
Ebba, who seemed more like a man than a woman and
managed everything, in-doors and out, including her
sons. Eleanor, watching her grandmother with
shy observant eyes, was not quite sure whether her
father came under that rule or not. He never disputed
anything his mother said or opposed her will, but
somehow, when he saw that his sweet Provencal wife
wanted anything, he contrived that she should have
it.

Eleanor could not help seeing, however, that her mother
was careful not to appear discontented or melancholy,
and to do all that a daughter could do for her husband’s
stern old mother. Both Sir Stephen Giffard and
Sir Walter, Eleanor’s father, were away most
of the time, and if Lady Philippa had been disposed
to make herself unhappy she might have been exceedingly
miserable. The old chatelaine did not approve
of luxury, even such small luxuries as were almost
necessities in that vast pile of stone which was the
inheritance of the Norman Giffards. The castle
hall was as grim and bare as a guard-room except on
state occasions, and the food was hardly better on
the master’s table than below the salt, where
the common folk ate. To be sure, there was plenty
to eat, such as it was. The old lord, who had
been dead for many years now, had married the daughter
of a Saxon earl when he was a young knight in England,
and Lady Ebba had been used to plentiful provision
in the house of her father. In the autumn, when
the other castles in the neighborhood sent forth gay
hunting parties, and the deep forest, whose trees
had never known the ax since Caesar built his bridges
in Gaul, rang to the hunting horns, there was no such
merrymaking on the Giffard lands. Instead, the
folk were salting down beef and fish and pork—­particularly
pork, from the herds of swine that roamed the woods
feeding on the acorns and beech mast. Toward the
end of the winter there seemed to be more pork than
anything else on the table.